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Monday, April 22, 2013

The day after a team is mathematically eliminated from playoff contention is never an easy one.

There are many questions about what went wrong, how it happened and how it can be fixed and there usually aren’t a lot of immediate answers.

For Devils, dealing with this disappointment less than a year after making it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals, but also for the second time in three seasons makes it even more difficult.

“Two different sets of circumstances, without question,” Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello said of the 2010-11 and 2012-13 teams that missed the plaoffs. “Both teams, in my opinion and in all our opinions, could have been in it, but we look at reasons not excuses. Right now, we have to relook at everything. I have to look at what I did and what I didn’t do. This is not about anything other than that at this point and then we’ll go from there. But right now we have three games left. The season isn’t over and we have to focus in on what we’re doing now, not worry about what happened or didn’t happen.

“Certainly you don’t feel good about it, but we have to go forward here.”

The idea is to figure out what wrong so that missing the playoffs two times in three seasons doesn’t become three times in four seasons.

“You don’t accept it,” Lamoriello said.

Looking back at this 48-game lockout-shortened season, what stands out most is the way the team struggled when Martin Brodeur and Ilya Kovalchuk were injured.

The Devils went 3-8-2, including 0-5-1 in the first six games, when Brodeur sat out 13 in a row with a pinched nerve in his upper back/neck. They then went 1-6-4 in the 11 games Kovalchuk missed with his right shoulder injury, including losses in the first 10 (0-6-4).

The Devils are 11-3-3 with both Brodeur and Kovalchuk in the lineup this season and 6-15-7 with at least one of them sitting out.

The Devils scored only 19 goals, and were shut out three times, in the 11 games Kovalchuk missed. Although backup goaltender Johan Hedberg struggled at times when Brodeur was out, goal scoring was an issue then as well, even with a healthy Kovalchuk in the lineup. They scored two goals or fewer in 10 of the 13 games.

“I think what we didn’t do at a time we had injuries is usually people rise to the occasion and pick up the slack and in this case it didn’t happen, not through anybody’s fault,” Lamoriello said. “All you have to do is look at the drought that different people went in. There are certain things that are factual. You can ask a lot of questions – What went wrong? What didn’t go wrong? And you have to come back to the facts of how things went.

“Yeah, the team was capable of being the playoffs. The team when it got into that drought had a difficult time. It started with those two games in Florida (3-2 overtime loss) and Tampa (5-4 shootout loss) that we got tied at the end and for whatever reason we couldn’t overcome that. Not that we did anything different. It was just that we couldn’t find the right formula. Different people didn’t rise to the occasion a time that they should have.”

Brodeur didn’t hesitate to bring up Zach Parise's name when asked following Sunday’s 4-1 loss to the Rangers what this team was missing from the one that went to the Stanley Cup Finals last season. When Parise left for Minnesota as an unrestricted free agent last July 5, Lamoriello knew he wouldn’t be able to replace him and all he did. Still, none of the players Lamoriello brought in came close to filling the goal void created by the Parise’s departure and the decision to not to resign Petr Sykora.

“You always feel you could have done more," Lamoriello admitted. "Certainly, you’ll always do anything and everything to have success. You lose Zach. You don’t replace a player like that. But he was out of the lineup and we won before (without him). So, you can’t put that on him. Other people have to rise to the occasion. We had people start off extremely well. If we would have had half of the way they started off follow through, we might not be talking today.”

Lamoriello could have been referring to David Clarkson, who scored 10 goals in the first 14 games and has just four since then. But he wasn’t the only one who faded after a fast start.

After being a Calder Trophy finalist last season, Adam Henrique has struggled for long stretches during his second season in the league. Henrique put up four goals and two assists in his first seven games back following left thumb surgery, but then went nine consecutive games without a goal. He had another drought of 11 games without a goal before scoring in empty-netter in Philadelphia Thursday and has only 11 goals for the season.

Patrik Elias has probably been the Devils most consistent forward, but he scored just one goal in the 11 games Kovalchuk missed.

“I’d never seen a drought like that with so many players at a given time and at a time you were hoping they would go the other way,” Lamoriello said. “It wasn’t that they weren’t trying or weren’t working, they weren’t getting it.”

Travis Zajac, who was healthy after missing most of last season with a torn left Achilles tendon, has struggled all season, scoring only six goals. Even Kovalchuk underachieved when healthy. He’s scored 10 goals, but only three 5-on-5. Four of his goals came shorthanded.

During the 13 games in a row Brodeur missed, Kovalchuk scored three goals -- two shorthanded.

The Devils did have a strong second half without Parise two seasons ago when he was recovering from knee surgery, but still missed the playoffs that year. And the difference between that team in this one is that it still had Kovalchuk. When Kovalchuk was injured this season, the Devils didn’t have a player of that level, such as Parise, to help fill the void.

“You only have so much depth with your top six to nine forwards. No one does,” Lamoriello said. “You always do what you can to go out and get them. You never say ‘We’re good enough.’ You’re never good enough. I don’t care where we are. You always try to get better.”

A few players, including Brodeur and Elias, have stated they believe the Devils would have made the playoffs if this was a full 82-game season instead of a lockout-shortened 48-game schedule because they would have had more games to recover from those 10 consecutive losses. That’s not a scenario Lamoriello is willing to discuss.

“It isn’t (an 82-game schedule). It’s a hypothetical,” Lamoriello said. “We are where we are and we all had the same playing situation. In my opinion, even the last three or four games before we beat Philly (to end the losing streak), those three games, you don’t leave those three games feeling that you didn’t play well enough to win. In fact, you felt good about the way you played. It’s just how long is it going to take to get over this? So, there’s not much you do different.

“But we didn’t get it. You make your own breaks. You pay the results of how you play and what you do. We played well, but we didn’t get it done.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.